Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1030342AbWJJUux (ORCPT ); Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:50:53 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1030344AbWJJUux (ORCPT ); Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:50:53 -0400 Received: from boogie.lpds.sztaki.hu ([193.224.70.237]:2190 "EHLO boogie.lpds.sztaki.hu") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1030342AbWJJUuw (ORCPT ); Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:50:52 -0400 Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:50:51 +0200 From: Gabor Gombas To: Paul Wouters Cc: fedora-xen@redhat.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: more random device badness in 2.6.18 :( Message-ID: <20061010205051.GB14865@boogie.lpds.sztaki.hu> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Copyright: Forwarding or publishing without permission is prohibited. Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1533 Lines: 38 On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 08:08:32PM +0200, Paul Wouters wrote: > Since hardware random is not transparently added to /dev/random's entropy, > applications such as Openswan need to test for the availability of the > seperate device file (not a good design imho). So Openswan will use > /dev/hw_random if available. Why should Openswan touch /dev/hw_random directly? > Every call to /dev/hw_random gives that one (not very random!) line of output, > and then nothing more ever. A call to /dev/random still works: $ apt-cache show rng-tools [...] The rngd daemon acts as a bridge between a Hardware TRNG (true random number generator) such as the ones in some Intel/AMD/VIA chipsets, and the kernel's PRNG (pseudo-random number generator). . It tests the data received from the TRNG using the FIPS 140-2 (2002-10-10) tests to verify that it is indeed random, and feeds the random data to the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ kernel entropy pool. [...] There is a good reason why /dev/hw_random is different from /dev/random... Gabor -- --------------------------------------------------------- MTA SZTAKI Computer and Automation Research Institute Hungarian Academy of Sciences --------------------------------------------------------- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/